ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a case study of a female patient, who had retreated into the structure of a ‘tower’ and which served as a refuge for her fantasies. It shows the pervasive influence a pathological organisation, represented by the ‘tower’, had on the patient’s life and how threatened she felt by the possibility of moving out of her dungeon. The shifts in the analysis can be roughly summarised in four phases: she found herself absolutely loyal to her oppressors as well as to the author; she got into an irresolvable conflict of loyalty; she moved out of the dominance of her pathological organisation, but was then threatened by chaos and confusion and feeling dependent on the author, like a puppet on a string; and she felt decidedly better having reached a kind of ‘coexistence’ between her now weakened pathological organisations and her analysis.
